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The disinformation mantra has long been “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” Now a new poll across 14 countries by Ipsos MORI shows that in fact, most people really are wrong about the basic make-up of their populations and the scale of key social issues.

Teenage birth rates: on average, people across the 14 countries think that 15% of teenagers aged 15-19 give birth each year. This is 12 times higher than the average official estimate of 1.2% across these countries. People in the US guess at a particularly high rate of teenage births, estimating it at 24% of all girls aged 15-19 when it’s actually 3%. But other countries with very low rates of teenage births are further out proportionally: for example, Germans think that 14% of teenage girls give birth each year when it’s actually only 0.4% (35x the actual figure).

Today’s looming evidence that we are living in the Idiocracy, via the Washington Post:

Our results are clear, but also somewhat disconcerting: The less people know about where Ukraine is located on a map, the more they want the U.S. to intervene there militarily. Even controlling for a series of demographic characteristics and participants’ general foreign policy attitudes, we found that the less accurate our participants were, the more they wanted the U.S. to use force [and] the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing.

On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views.

Americans enter 2014 with a profoundly negative view of their government, expressing little hope that elected officials can or will solve the nation’s biggest problems, a new poll finds.

Half say America’s system of democracy needs either “a lot of changes” or a complete overhaul, according to the poll conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 1 in 20 says it works well and needs no changes.

Americans, who have a reputation for optimism, have a sharply pessimistic take on their government after years of disappointment in Washington.

The percentage of Americans saying the nation is heading in the right direction hasn’t topped 50 in about a decade. In the new poll, 70 percent lack confidence in the government’s ability “to make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2014.”

To some degree, are Americans correct in believing that scientific findings are swayed by ideology and agenda? Or do they simply long for a return to the Dark Ages? The Huffington Post reports:

How much faith do Americans have in scientists and science journalists? In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, only 36 percent of Americans reported having “a lot” of trust that information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. Fifty-one percent said they trust that information only a little, and another 6 percent said they don’t trust it at all.

What’s more, many Americans worry that the results of scientific studies are sometimes tainted by political ideology — or by pressure from the studies’ corporate sponsors. A whopping 78 percent of Americans think that information reported in scientific studies is often (34 percent) or sometimes (44 percent) influenced by political ideology. Similarly, 82 percent said that they think that scientific findings are often (43 percent) or sometimes (39 percent) influenced by the companies or organizations sponsoring them.

So does anyone actually like professional sports? Fascinating ritual sociology from the UK’s Daily Mail:

Nine out of ten men lie about liking sports to impress friends or to get ahead at work, it was revealed today. Football was the game that men most faked a love of, with two out of three admitting they gushed to mates about the national sport to avoid being unpopular, a survey of 500 Britons found.

Football was the most fibbed about, with 61 per cent hiding their dislike. The national game was followed by F1, cricket, gold and rugby. One in three admitted to lying because they thought it would aid their career.

Is belief in ghosts and psychic phenomena supplanting religion as the public’s refuge from the rational? The Telegraph reports:

A new study suggests belief in ghosts is growing in the UK.

More than half of those taking part (52 per cent) said they believed in the supernatural, a marked increase on the two previous comparable studies, in 2009 and 2005, which both found a level of around 40 per cent. The survey also found that one in five claimed to have had some sort of paranormal experience.

The new study was carried out for the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (Assap), for its annual conference.

Dave Wood, chairman of the group, said: “It could be that in a society which has seen economic uncertainty and is dominated by information and technology, more people are seeking refuge in the paranormal, whereas in the past they might have sought that in religion.”

Can we believe in UFOs? Or in polls saying we believe in UFOs? The Huffington Post writes:

Nearly half the population believes UFOs could be a sign of extraterrestrial visitation.

A HuffPost/YouGov poll reveals that 48 percent of adults in the United States are open to the idea that alien spacecraft are observing our planet — and just 35 percent outright reject the idea.

The poll was seen as vindication from the community of UFO researchers who often feel they are laughed off by government officials.

“It’s always been intriguing to me how we act as though only kooks and quacks believe in flying saucers. And it’s never been true,” said former nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, who was the original civilian investigator of the events surrounding the legendary Roswell, NM, UFO crash of 1947.

In the poll, 1,000 adults were asked if they either believed or didn’t believe that some people have witnessed UFOs that have an extraterrestrial origin.

The advent of new technology has ushered an era of unprecedented transparency and openness – oh, whoops. CBS News reports:

According to a survey released Tuesday, a majority of people across the globe feel that corruption has worsened in their countries. And while 53 percent of respondents felt corruption had increased in the last two years, a majority also believed that their governments couldn’t fix the problem.

A new report from the international anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International finds that mistrust in governing institutions extends beyond those countries, and beyond the protests in the streets. According to the survey, more than one in four people reported paying a bribe in the past year.

In the U.S., 64 percent said the government is run by a few big interests, compared with 5 percent who felt the same in Norway, and 83 percent in Greece.

A taboo urge lying just below the surface of society, waiting to bubble up? Tabloid the Daily Star reports:

Millions of Brits want to eat human flesh like movie cannibal Hannibal Lecter, a shock report revealed yesterday. Almost a quarter of us reckon we are “curious” to taste human meat – while 14% want a piece of ourselves fried to learn what our own body tastes like.

Even more of those questioned confessed they would be happy to tuck into their own body if a doctor safely took a sample from them.

The findings of the cannibalism poll for telly channel Eden come just days after 40-year-old Brit Geoffrey Portway admitted a US plot to kill and eat a child. He faces up to 27 years in an American jail after law enforcement agents found his home in Massachusetts was equipped with a steel cage and a child-sized homemade coffin.

Belief in powerful shape-shifting lizards is also trending. Public Policy Polling has released the results of a telephone survey this past month of 1,247 registered voters which measured belief in various conspiracy theories. Findings include:

• 21% of voters say the US government covered up a UFO crash in Roswell, NM.
• 28% believe a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order, .
• 20% believe there is a link between vaccines and autism.
• 7% think the moon landing was faked.
• 13% think Barack Obama is the anti-Christ.
• 14% say the CIA was instrumental in creating the crack cocaine epidemic in America’s inner cities in the 1980’s.
• 4% say they believe “lizard people” control our societies.
• 51% say a larger conspiracy was at work in the JFK assassination.
• 5% believe that Paul McCartney actually died in 1966.